John AravosisFollow me on Twitter: @aravosis | @americablog | @americabloggay | Facebook | Instagram | Google+ | LinkedIn. John Aravosis is the Executive Editor of AMERICAblog, which he founded in 2004. He has a joint law degree (JD) and masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown; and has worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and as a stringer for the Economist. He is a frequent TV pundit, having appeared on the O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline, AM Joy & Reliable Sources, among others. John lives in Washington, DC. John's article archive.

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Just google and ask about the cancer rates in the Marshall Islands and elsewhere where we tested these bombs in the early fifties. Staggering. In 1990, Congress finally passed legislation aimed at helping those affected by the cancers from the fallout.

The first thing I thought of when seeing those men, wearing no shirts, no goggles, blithely having such a good time, was to wonder just how many decades later they all began dying from various forms of cancer.

I am from the generation that vividly remembers those halcyon school days, when we got to watch great educational films like the “Duck and Cover” series, which, again, if you have missed, you need to watch to understand the paranoia instilled in a whole generation of children. Aside from the paranoia, the hilarious useless advice. Should have been more like duck and kiss your a** goodbye.

Over 1,000 above-ground atomic tests in the U.S. alone.
And people wonder why the cancer rate is so high.
Add to that the radiation released from the nuclear meltdowns at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima.
And did you know that nuclear power plants release radiation during their daily operations??
Learn more at the highly recommended site www ENENEWS com

That me smile. It brought back memories of those films we saw in high school, I was a Junior in high school that year, that showed how our government was testing nuclear bombs in land, sea, and air. We were ready for the Reds to nuke us and invade and we knew we were all going to die. It didn’t happen. But they warped us pretty good. But be not afraid, worse has happened since then and now we’re caught up in a vast, non-nuclear conflict that warps from one place to another without any clear signal of why we’re shooting, but we’re shooting anyhow. They did know about nuclear radiation, they didn’t care.

I think this video may have been included in the “Trinity and Beyond” film (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114728/). Check this out for more nuclear test footage. It’s both frightening and beautiful in a twisted way.

Agreed,what we have done and are doing to our planet is madness.
So far human greenhouse gas emissions have raised the temperature of the planet by one degree Celsius.
“Oceans are 30 per cent more acidic than they were 40 years ago. The atmosphere is four per cent more wet than 40 years ago because warm air holds more water than cold air. That means more deluge and downpour in wet areas and more dryness in dry areas. So we’re seeing more destructive mega floods and storms, increasing thunderstorms, and increasing lightning strikes.”
Bill McKibben, world renowned environmentalist and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Who needs atomics? It’s insane

This may not be the most popular thing to say where but I think there can be a strange beauty to these things, like watching an avalanche or a volcanic explosion in progress. Indeed these are forces of tremendous power…being expended on nothing better than making a big boom. “War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable…” In all probability this nuclear test accomplished all three of those things.